the art of fiona hall
Julie Ewington, Fiona Hall
Piper Press, Sydney, 2005 ISBN 0 9751901 1 3
When he described the encyclopedia Naturalis Historia as ‘… a learned and comprehensive work as full of variety as nature itself’, Pliny the Younger easily could have been speaking about Fiona Hall’s practice rather than one of her inspirations.1 ‘The Art of Fiona Hall’, and the monograph Fiona Hall present what curator and author Julie Ewington calls a ‘taking stock’2 of the artist’s considerable output to date, and both the survey exhibition and publication create compelling viewing and reading.
Hall, who came to prominence through her photography in the 1980s, is a remarkably diverse and ambitious artist, yet it is apparent that her core concerns have remained constant throughout her career. The exhibition presents works from her earlier photographic practice as well as the complex beaten, woven (if one could be said to weave a bird’s nest), knitted, carved and intricately beaded objects that have been the mainstay of the 1990s. Two new works, Understorey (1999–2004) and Tender (2003-05), have not been exhibited before. All of Hall’s work is dense with reference and engenders feelings of chaos; meanings frequently proliferate beyond the conceptual threads that should bind them, yet it is a chaos in perpetual tension with order.
A number of the photographic works included in the show, such as Divine Comedy (1988), Historia non-naturalis (1991) and The price is right series (1994), work together to give a sense of the artist’s move from photography to an object-based practice, providing a firm context for the rest of the show. The sculptural elements in the photographs anticipate works like Words (1990), or Paradisus Terrestris